


walk on embers

by Goose_Boy



Series: what the dark dragged in [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, Fugue, Gaslighting, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23982508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goose_Boy/pseuds/Goose_Boy
Summary: Everybody left, they always did in the end. Too much, not enough, the pattern never changed and he could never bite down hard enough. He would do better this time, he would, if someone just gave him the chance.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: what the dark dragged in [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729189
Comments: 19
Kudos: 188
Collections: Interesting Character and/or Interesting Relationship Development





	walk on embers

**Author's Note:**

> This takes a lot of writers liberties, and I aint sorry. It gets worse before it gets better.

He had known hate through his life, the perils of man and the pitfalls of his arrogance. His childhood had been idyllic, soft grasses dotted with flowers and fields of wheat. They scorned the things that didn’t abide by their laws, were weary of the things they didn’t understand and did their level best to destroy the things that they feared. He had laughed loudly, bare footed in the dirt and belly never empty, the breathless wonder that only a child could ever know. Oppression and aggression and the furious kind of scorn that sank into the bones, stained the marrow until everything started to go fetid and rot. His mother had loved him dearly, reminded him with kisses to his eyelids every night, his father a man of well meant action if ever he had never known the words for affection. 

He had thought things were different here. Never had he doubted his worth, the way that he felt cared for under the watchful gaze of his companion. Cat slit eyes and he should have known better, heart on his sleeve and he had held the very sword that gutted him. Words had never been Geralt’s forte and he had always teased him so, half huffed laughter and whisper shy smiles. Not all cruelty came from actions and not all monsters wore strange faces in the dark. Work roughed hands, he had always done his best to be careful in the only way that he really knew how, defense and heartfelt frustrations. Words were easily barbed and poison laced, the faces most familiar were the ones that threatened the most. He had always been safe here, had never questioned the things that lived behind amber sun eyes because he knew his friend, he knew his affections. 

He should have known better, but he never really learned at all. 

Everybody had their moments, he knew his own temper well enough and there was no shame in needing a moment, a few days.

Jaskier turned on heel and left the Witcher on the mountain.

-

He walked, the sun at his face and mountain craig beneath his boots. A foot before the other and distance was beautiful, simple, something methodical to be found in the  _ left right left right left right _ sway of his shoulders, his hips. Breathe in, unburdened shoulders and a crystal point cage set into the base of his skull. Sun upon his skin, the ruffle of wind and the slip of birdsong overhead just out of reach. If he tried he could touch the clouds, if he tried he could take fistfuls of feathers and ozone static and pack it between his teeth. 

Breathe out, grass underfoot and dust in his lungs, hands going, going, gone numb. Pollen and wheat and sunlight that burned and blistered and licked his skin raw. Lovers embrace in the heat of it all, clicking throat and sticky eyelids. The grind of bone and an ache in his chest, thump and clench that breathing didn’t seem to fix. He walked instead, the sun at his back and the mountains looming. 

Bare feet, mud between his toes and climbed high at his shins, his calves. Bleary eyed and tender headed, plodding steps as his muscles ached. The sun at his face, soft hewn promise of the metronome quiet of walking,  _ left right _ . Rolling clouds and the promise of rain, thick sulfur bog riding the aftertaste of exhaustion,  _ left right _ . Breathe in and he swayed, head spinning as the world shivered and danced.  _ Left right _ and he stumbled, body buckling into the muck where it caught him with a squelch. Breathe out and he blinked at the sky, grey dapple of it through the canopy of trees and let the earth hold him until he could feel his body again.

-

Porthcawl lay south of Vole, closer to the Kerack border than anything else in Cidaris. Seasalt lush in the air and the crisp of the edge of the world, miles of fields dotted with trees and speckled with forests. Docks stretched into the deep inland curl of the ocean and gave promise for the return of ships when the fishers came back from deeper waters. Tabby cottages and little collections of houses with people he had known, families that he had recognized. It was the right season to bring in a full haul, enough fish and enough funds to line the village coffers and larders well before winter set in. 

No, no that wasn’t right. 

Porthcawl lay south of Vole in a faint valley, closer to the Kerack border than anything else in Cidaris. Set where the ocean cut deep into the land, turned shallow and hungry and bloated the soil until crops fought to grow amid the mud and sulfur. Too many trees, long armed claws that shot up from the marshland and stretched their canopies wide with low hanging leaves and trailing vines. Their trunks sank low beneath the too still waters, gaseous bubbles from the muck that steamed and hissed and threatened to give way to flame. 

The closest village was a full day’s ride away at a steady gallop, the marshland difficult to traverse when the tides swelled and tried to swallow the paths. Culcheth had no port access but a better chance at growing crops, a chance for soil that wasn’t sunken beneath ichor black swamp waters. They weren’t the regional seat, but they had the only pellar and that stood for something at the end of the day. But Culcheth was a full day’s ride away at a steady gallop in perfect conditions, and nothing was ever perfect in the swamp. 

He walked with bare feet across rot wood planks that creaked and groaned and threatened to give beneath him. Barely a rise above the water, high tide upon them and the sun somewhere high above. It stood no chance against the dense foliage, stretching branches woven together so that perpetual dusk sat heavy and thick only to be disturbed by the eventual fall of night. Sulfur and fumes, a visible yellow tinged plume of it hovering above the waters off to his left. There weren’t enough years behind him to erase the things this place had done, but he swayed along the path that he had once wandered with his eyes closed. Three years wouldn’t have been long enough, not if twenty weren’t in addition and a world of travel beneath his feet did nothing to make a difference. He had been somewhere, he had gone somewhere beyond these tepid waters and sunken earth but he couldn’t remember where for the life of him. The quiet was a comfort, the silent lullaby of dead water and loam that slid like a balm against the insistent static buzzing that had begun in the base of his skull when he’d woken. 

None had heard the screaming all the way in Culcheth, nobody had dared to investigate the corpse flesh fire scent that had carried in on the breeze. Life had surely carried on in Culcheth as if Porthcawl had never existed, as if they hadn’t thought to check on their country neighbors, their friends. Nothing lived in Porthcawl anymore but the slither of the wildlife through the marshlands and promise of bandits. The crackle of embers in the distance, a fire where he hadn’t thought to find one and there was the strangest sensation in his throat. 

Two eyes blinked at him a few paces ahead, to the right of the stilted path and almost sunken beneath the water. Corpse bloat blue skin and a dead gaze that stared at him just above the depths, he would have thought the creature already rotten and empty if he hadn’t known better. If he hadn’t felt the thrum of it beneath his skin, tasted the beat of its heart brine curdle on his tongue he would have thought that the thing had already been taken care of. It bobbed there instead, watched him as he gained on it and passed and only then did the water ripple, the creature keeping almost silent company with him. 

A single drowner became two, became five, a swarm of them that swam through the stagnant swamp waters and shadowed him like flies. The following felt like a strange collective of pests, vagrant shadows and urchin onlookers that kept with him as he stepped light and leisurely down the path. They were like the children that had never played with him, too fearful for their parents' whispers and too uncertain despite their own curiosity, a few steps behind but never far. Following now but they wouldn’t for long, timid of the lights that burned ahead where there shouldn’t have been any, he kept forward even as they slowly sank back into the swamp, one by one. 

Voices, masculine and low, liquor chortling and conquest carolling, he would be interrupting something. A merry band of whoreson’s with a bounty that wasn’t theirs, on land that would never belong to them while he still breathed. He had burnt these trees, he had soaked this earth in blood and fed their screaming to the ocean where it quivered and waited. Like nobody had given bones and marrow and sinew to these waters in days, years, like nobody had cared for this earth like he had and given it the things it wanted. 

“Oi, you fuckin’ lost?”

A feast, roaring fire and the sweet of cooking meat, they had had a feast in the ember husk shell of his home and oh, this was wonderful. Offerings made like they had known he was coming, like they had known he would be hungry and tired from the journey that he didn’t remember the start of. But they were loud where they shouldn’t have been, two of the men rising to stand as he swanned into what had once been the cross section of town. The third watched them where he sat, dagger in hand where the tip wedged beneath a nail like he meant to clean himself. 

The one to speak branded a shortsword at him, unpolished metal and jagged edges as if he hadn’t bothered to sharpen it. Care for it, what sort of warrior didn’t maintain his blade?

“Asked you a godsdamned que-”

_ Pop _ , the man’s speech snapping to a quick, wet end as his body slumped toward the swamp swollen boards. As his head exploded in a spew of blood and ashen muscle and bone, as his companions swore and screamed and surged to their feet like they thought that would do anything. Hot on his face, sticky warmth that dripped down his brow and ran down his cheek like a tear but it tasted like metal when he caught it with his tongue. Blooming smile and a breath sent the body careening into the waters below, feed for the drowners that had followed him even when they shouldn’t have. 

“You can go now.”

Dulcet tones sweet water gentle and light, there was a rumble laced deep within that made their charred surroundings shiver and groan. The buildings pulsed with it, decades dead charcoal flaring momentarily to life like breath almost given to the remains of a burnt out fire. He could almost hear the laughter, he could almost hear their voices again and he smiled at the two that remained. They weren’t who he wanted, they weren’t who he knew and they stumbled and stared like he had grown an extra head, like he had come for anything more than his home. 

“What kind of fuckin’ monster are you?”

Softly spoken like a swear, like a plea and he pouted at the mouthfeel of it, at the accusation, the implication. 

“That’s just rude.”

Blue flames burning in his eyes, there was that peculiar feeling in his throat. Like an itch from trapped moths and the flicker beat of something that fought not to be contained. Wings scraping against his esophagus, the crawl of a promise that he didn’t understand but recognized. 

Bare feet on half rotten wood and Julian sang to himself, breathless and crackling as the swamp gases caught fire, as the remaining two bandit’s started to scream. 

_ ‘I promise you I’ll be better _

_ I promise you I’ll try _

_ But like rubbing wine stains into rugs it’s my curse _

_ To try and make it right, but by trying make it worse’ _

-

That strange bubbling felt better when he sang, moth wings aflutter in his throat and centipedes crawling with too many little feet along the back of his tongue. No bugs came forth no matter how hard he tried, no wriggling little worms and no little frogs with too sticky feet trying to climb free of his jaw. Forced vomiting did nothing but waste meat, talking to the occasional fish that surfaced didn’t change anything, but singing did. Nonsensical phrases and notes that didn’t blend together like they probably should, they felt wrong to his ears even if he didn’t really understand why. 

The drowners didn't seem to care, had eaten the bandits he had offered until only a few bones remained. A bobbing skull amidst bulging eyes that blinked like oversized frogs, he didn’t have anything else to feed them. Nothing left to give them and strange little songs that wouldn’t be enough even if they didn’t seem to mind and h-

They didn’t mind they didn’t mi _ nd they didn’t mind they di- _

_ No filli- _

_ Don’t you ever shu- _

_ If life co- _

Lips smacking together, he sat cross legged outside the husk of what had once been the merchant’s shop. Watched the drowners where they shifted and swayed almost beneath the water, drifting off one by one over time until only a single remained. The first maybe, impossible to tell but he hummed all the same, hemmed and hawed and dug both elbows into his knees, jaw caught by his fists. This single one stayed, this single one didn’t leave, floated in place and watched him with overwide eyes even though he didn’t have anything else to offer it. 

“What do we do now?”

One eye blinked first, then the other, and the creature dipped beneath the surface for a moment. It didn’t move beyond that, didn’t sink down into the mud and the muck like its fellows had and Julian hummed. Nodded along because really, what else did they have to do? The creature had the better idea, there was nothing wrong with sitting and waiting, something would surely wander their way sooner or later. 

“You’re right.”

Darkness had fallen swiftly, nightfall so dense that it settled like a wind chilled blanket about his shoulders. Cuddled him close like he had once done for frogs, safe and cradled by the nocturnal hush. There were rough patches on his fingertips, strange bits of hard calloused skin that he didn’t remember acquiring but it matched the way he knew his feet had once been. Tender heels and unsure arches, his feet didn’t feel as strong as they should have but Julian just hummed again. Grinned at the caterwauling attempt that the drowner made in return and the way the water rippled from its mouth. 

Like it wanted to sing with him, and Julian laughed a wild, arching sound that smacked off the trees and the water. The tide would slip out soon, the waters would drain until thick bloated mud shone through instead. How high would it climb if he walked in it, would it cake to his ankles or paint to his knees? He wanted an answer to this question, wanted to know how far the mud would go if he just dumped his weight off of the dock. 

The drowner wouldn’t mind, just blinked at him like Julian hadn’t fed it enough, like it wanted to hear more. 

So he sang for it, any audience was an audience and the drowner was better company than the frogs would have been anyway. Better than the children that never played with him, better than his parents who never listened. The drowner bubbled and wailed like it wanted to keep time, like it wanted to sing with him, and Julian laughed and rocked where he sat. Knees clacking against damp wood, that sound was something else too and he paused before slapping his hands against the dock just to hear it again. 

Like a waterlogged drum that had been left in a boat overnight, he could do something with that. 

_ ‘Goodbye to all my darkness, there’s nothing here but light _

_ Adieu to all the faceless things that sleep with me at night _

_ This here is not make up, it’s a porcelain tomb _

_ And this here is not singing, I’m just screaming in tune because’ _

-

_ Because he couldn’t see the sun from here but he remembered stories, drunken father and sleeping mother, words that they didn’t want him to hear. Because that was an answer, because that was something to give himself. Comfort and something to hold onto with both hands, some kind of knowledge to wrap himself in. Creature comfort when all he wanted otherwise was to avoid whatever heavy touch they decided to give him.  _

_ Because he couldn’t see the sun, not really, not ever, and evidently there had been no sun the day he’d been born. The great big ball of fire in the sky that must have done something, but it had blacked out like an empty eye socket instead. An event, his mother had called it, a cataclysmic happening that had marked him for life. A curse, his father had informed him, fingers fisted in his hair and a feral look in his eyes. A curse, an omen of the horrible, monstrous things that he would do, a physical manifestation of the unnatural horror that Destiny had marked him to be.  _

_ Julian wanted to sing, and he wanted to see how many frogs he could fit in his pockets at once, but they squished too easily between his fingers and he bruised like rotten fruit every time his parents touched him.  _

_ - _

There were boats in the distance. 

He could hear them sifting through the waters when the tides were exceptionally high, from the swollen banks of what should have been the river into what could have been fields. Smacking paddles that didn’t sound like any of the animals that he knew, none of the creatures that he had grown accustomed to in the ember husk of his home. Drowners didn’t sound like that, water hags didn’t talk like that, foglets didn’t make that sort of noise. There were people there, there were  _ others _ out in the distance like they were comfortable here, like they did this often. 

He ached at the thought, at the notion of them and Julian squinted at the thick overhead canopy like it had all the answers. The birds didn’t care, fluttered overhead between the branches without hesitation, but there were  _ noises _ . 

Rolling over onto his belly, cool wood against his bare torso and Julian pulled his hands beneath himself and pushed. Up onto his elbows, into a loose, low crouch once he managed to get his feet under himself and he teetered on the edge of the raised walkway. Too far forward and he would tumble into the marsh, swallowed up by the swamp and cradled by the drowner that had disappeared beneath the surface hours prior. He couldn’t see their boats but he could hear them, could hear them like he could hear the birds, could hear them like he couldn’t hear his bulbous eyed companion. 

A keening sound from deep in his chest, reedy and shattered and shallow, Julian rocked in place where he clung to the dock. The waterlogged remains of Porthcawl croaked and groaned with the shift of the tide and his heart thundered violently in his chest. They were right there, just out of sight and swallowed by the corpse claw trees like they weren’t really there at all. Mournful warbling from chapped and cracked lips, the sound carried on the water with the curl of embers flickering back to bright life in the village long burnt hollow. 

-

“It’s a Devil.”

Exhaustion lisp and bruises beneath the man’s eyes, the innkeeper leaned heavy on the counter between them. He reeked of stale sweat, of too much ale and the underlying bitter of urine like he hadn’t taken care of himself. Like he hadn’t left his inn long enough to try to wash off the bog stench that swamps always carried. 

Unimpressed expression and the man sneered a little only for a loud clatter from the other side of the overfull tavern to make him flinch. He was nervous, bitter burnt anxiety just beneath the rest of him until it clustered together and Geralt watched quietly. It was always a Devil if they didn’t understand, it was always some horrific fantastical beast if they hadn't laid eyes on it and couldn't explain it. Their fear never changed, their anger never abated, the only difference now was that there was nobody to break the tense silence.

"Half payment up front."

Already the man nodded, a bag of ducats shoved into his fist and Geralt stood. Left the overcrowded tavern behind and gave a single glance to double check that Roach was still secure in the stable. No sugarcubes that she didn't need, no apples when she shouldn't have anymore, but he would be back in a few days and she would be fine and waiting still. 

Took the southern marsh road out of Culcheth and swallowed against the screaming silence that surrounded him. It had clung for the last seven months and it would hang on forever now that it had sank its teeth in, no songbird to fill the space between them with chatter and self made hymnes. He may as well have crushed that frail bird between his own fingers up on a mountain where they didn't belong.

Geralt walked south, toward the remains of Porthcawl in the distance and breathed against the festering ache in his heart.


End file.
